Prize winning historian Jean Edward Smith dead at 86

NEW YORK (AP) — Jean Edward Smith, a prize-winning historian known for his books on Franklin Roosevelt and Ulysses Grant, has died. He was 86.

Simon & Schuster confirmed his death Friday but did not immediately have further details.

A longtime professor at the University of Toronto, Smith wrote more than a dozen books, several about American presidents. “Grant,” published in 2001, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist credited with helping to raise the once-disparaged president’s reputation, a standing heightened further by Ron Chernow’s 2017 biography. Smith’s book on “Roosevelt, “FDR,” won the Francis Parkman Prize in 2007. More recently, he condemned the presidency of George W. Bush in the 2016 publication “Bush.” He also wrote favorable biographies of Dwight Eisenhower and John Marshall, the 19th century Supreme Court chief justice.

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